In reality the whole system is fake... fake money, fake economy, fake political process & system, fake food, fake laws, fake authority and fake morals... the good thing is that in reality fake things come to an end... just as this fake system will, inevitably, like the fake systems before...]]>https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161205/17450136200/this-is-really-bad-idea-facebook-twitter-youtube-microsoft-agree-to-block-terrorist-content.shtml#c816
Fri, 9 Dec 2016 09:59:59 PSThttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161205/17450136200/this-is-really-bad-idea-facebook-twitter-youtube-microsoft-agree-to-block-terrorist-content.shtml#c816This really is the key about this whole fiasco; there is no proof it will work. So, what we have now is yet another case of Facebook and co. running around like headless chickens, attempting to fend off legal action by lashing out at anything that seems a bit scary with panic-bans. What we NEED is people like Marc Zuckerberg to start plowing their mega-millions into actual RESEARCH about what makes people turn violent, and then acting on it like responsible adults.

Thanks so much to the likes of A. Merkel and other world leaders for putting more pressure on the wrong people to make useless, superficial, ass-covering changes like these without an ounce of proof they will make an iota of difference.

What irks me the most, though, is the subtextual suggestion that the only 'terrorists' these people will be looking to block are jihadists... as opposed to, say, extreme right-wingers who murder Labour MPs just before a major referendum.

But even then, there's zero proof this block will prevent them from becoming radicalized. Did the 9/11 pilots meet on Facebook? Did they f*ck.]]>"Violation of ToS"https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161205/06575436190/south-korea-to-tackle-video-game-cheating-criminalizing-breaking-games-tos.shtml#c69
Fri, 9 Dec 2016 09:54:36 PSThttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161205/06575436190/south-korea-to-tackle-video-game-cheating-criminalizing-breaking-games-tos.shtml#c69

Codifying into law the criminalization of the violation of a software ToS

The law goes well beyond that. It also criminalizes things that would be violations of the ToS if a person had agreed to the ToS. In other words, it's illegal for anyone to create software if any game's ToS forbids such software. So if the ToS forbids people to make a competing game, nobody can create a competing game.

Unlike many state-level courts, Federal courts don't charge motion fees. Cases can last for years with tens or hundreds of motions and hearings and docket entries and all the court might get is that $350.

If people can flood the court with unlimited documents for a fixed cost, maybe that should be fixed. But it doesn't cost anything to host legal papers: RECAP/archive.org are doing it for free. And scanning documents shouldn't be considered an optional service these days. (Are judges working with electronic records?)

Unlike many state-level courts, Federal courts don't charge motion fees. Cases can last for years with tens or hundreds of motions and hearings and docket entries and all the court might get is that $350.

I know this is government, and I've worked with government long enough to know that government is fundamentally broken. But I always wonder why there isn't someone smart looking at this and saying "we aren't getting enough money, lets raise the rates and offer rate plans for folks who can't afford a lump sum payment" instead of "lets create a brand new and highly illegal tax which we can use to offset our costs."

Than I remember, I know this is government, and I've worked with government long enough to know that anyone smart enough to fix this problem has long ago decided not to work with government.

Morons and idiots would know that any name that is protected by copyright and/or trademark is still protected by copyright and trademark laws, even if you include such names in "meta-tags". It took me a five second search to find this out.

While there is likely a trademark case to be made against DoomRL for its title and logo, you're going to have to provide a better referece than "five second search" for the legal theory that you can't use trademarked terms in a website's meta tags.

There are facts in science and there are theories. Much of what is touted today as fact is really just theory.

That's not really accurate.

Science holds that nothing is ever 100% certain, and if empirical evidence contradicts existing knowledge, that knowledge must be revised.

Your distinction between theories and facts is, essentially, artificial. If you hold that "fact" means "a thing that is 100% certain and can never be disproven", then there's no such thing as a scientific fact, but I think that's a bit of a misleading interpretation.

If, on the other hand, you believe that a fact is something that is supported by empirical evidence and is held to be true with a high (but not 100%) degree of certainty, then a scientific theory is a fact.

See gravity, evolution, general and special relativity, etc.

The word "theory" has a specific meaning in science, and it's not the same meaning used in conversation. A scientific theory is not at all the same kind of theory that David Caruso means when he says he has a theory about who the killer is in this week's case; in science that kind of "theory" isn't called a theory, it's called a hypothesis. A scientific theory is a rigorously tested, predictive model.